


Power of Pain

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Infinity War Fix It [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 05:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14513283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: Walk with me, the future's at handHere with us, here where we standWe both know the power of painWe get back up and start it againWith new hope, no place for tearsLeave behind those frozen yearsCome with me and we'll go dreaming





	Power of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Title from BT's "Dreaming."
> 
> OH DEAR GOD, INFINITY WAR MESSED ME UP. I am grieving, I feel physically ill with the feeling of it, and I am emotionally shredded. Ten years of my heart and soul in this series of films, and I need to cope. I'm guessing you do, too.

"Hello, Loki."

He had died, life snuffed out by the mad Titan he had feared for years, yet he was standing in a grassy plain with no wounds. In front of him was endless green and a bright blue sky, the gentlest and mildest of all Asgardian summers. Behind him...

Behind him stood three women, and the trunk of a massive tree.

"The Norns," he breathed, and felt the urge to kneel before them. Urðr controlled that which happened, Verðandi controlled that which is happening, and Skuld controlled that which should be. The ladies Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld kept the _ørlǫg_ of men, shaped the _wyrd_ and enforced the laws of reality. Of all the creatures in the universe, these were the three that he would actually bow and scrape in front of. Not Hela, with her desire for death and conquest.

Come to think of it, she and Thanos would have gotten along far too well.

One stepped forward, and he knew it was Verðandi immediately. She controlled what was happening, after all, and he had only just died.

Odd, how that felt. It was real this time, not a close call he could come back from. He was sorry his desperate plans didn't work, that Thor likely had fallen right after he had. All his lies and petty jealousies were for nothing now. He was left as he was, a simple soul stripped bare. He didn't even have finery in his afterlife, just a forest green tunic over black trousers. Even his feet were bare, and his black hair hung to his shoulders like a curtain.

"You did what you could, but you cannot see the pattern of it. It's not your job to do so," Verðandi said gently. For some reason, she reminded him of Frigga, and his gut twisted in pain.

"They can't do it," he told her, voice cracking. "They're all going to die."

"Of course they will," Skuld said plainly, hefting the shears he hadn't seen before.

"There were plans laid," Urðr told him, no emotion in her voice. "I set the pattern."

He wanted to hate them, wanted to curse them. But as a practitioner of the arts, he knew better. He feared them, knew that he was _nothing_ in the face of the Norns.

Verðandi smiled at him kindly. "You see, you have a role in this now. And I needed you here with us for that."

"What do you need from me?" he asked, confused. Pain threaded his voice, and he saw no need to hide it from them. They would know everything anyway. "You shape the laws of reality."

"Yes, we do." Urðr said.

"Or did," Skuld said sourly.

"Because there is a stone that would undo what we have woven."

"The reality stone."

Verðandi nodded and reached out to touch Loki's cheek. "He will have it soon enough. As well as the other stones."

"Then what do you need from me?"

Verðandi gestured behind her, behind the great tree of Yggdrasil. Shimmering in a gray haze behind it was a sea of lost souls, most of which he didn't recognize. "It's time to begin anew." The crowd was growing larger and larger as Loki watched, and he tried not to feel sick at the sight of it. He knew where those souls were coming from, and this was not normally the land of the dead. But in his quest for what he saw as balance, Thanos was actually upending the natural order that the Norns had set.

"I see them," Loki said, still feeling sick. "But—"

Urðr spread her fingers wide, and there was something like a web between them. His perspective changed, so that she seemed like a giant, and the webbing was like solid rope. He could climb between them, see the finer strands and connections, feel the shape of it—

"You will have help, of course," she rasped.

Skuld began to laugh at Loki's confused expression. "Did you think we would entrust all of the _ørlǫg_ to you? When you have so much difficulty with the _spá?"_

Loki tried not to feel insulted. "I can learn if motivated."

"We already know of another familiar with the _ørlǫg_ as it is. And the afterworld owed us favors."

Questions about who would run the afterworld and what possible favor could be owed to the Norns died on his tongue unspoken.

Standing in front of him was Frigga, just as he had last seen her in her hologram. "Mother," he choked.

She gathered him up in her arms, warm and soft and loving as she had always been, even when he had tried to shove her away. "Come, Loki," she whispered, tears in her eyes as well. "We have much work to do. We have an entire universe to set to rights."


End file.
